Wed. 2 June I will try and keep the blog short, let the pix speak for themselves etc so I can go to sleep and actually get the buffet breakfast tomorrow. This morning I preferred to try and catch up on sleep (blogging all nite again!) and did not get up til 11.15am, showered and went to pay for the room for another night. Although this is almost 40 miles from Yosemite there are reasonably priced places and stuff here to eat etc. Unlike on the way there/back - where gas is $4 a gallon ($3 here) and even a burger costs $10 as I found out coming back tonight around 10pm from my Glacier Point sunset lookout - it took about 2 hours from there to get back here as it is right up at ... read more

Sunday 31 May this is from Sacramento but as I have updated San Luis Obispo today earlier this will be short with merely a few snaps as it is already 1am. Sitting in the sitting room in a very comfy old chair in the Hostel Sacramento - first HI I think I have stayed in for years and years. This is a 1898 mansion so worth it for that reason alone - the room is tiny for $57 with a single bed - but the public downstairs areas are amazing (and wifi). Found it by accident heading for cheap nasty modern motels no doubt. Have hopefully organised a car for 4 days from tomorrow to go Yosemite direction etc - the extras like CDW will kinda add up but we will see (in California I think ... read more

Santa Cruz - 2.30pm Sun. 30 Nov. (did you know its nickname is Santa Cruise becos of all the gays and lesbians here?) I have just arrived into the Paradise Inn by the Beach motel here and it has got kinda warm - supposedly 24 here which is about 6 degrees warmer than Monterey yesterday. Got 2 buses over here which took about 2 1/2 hrs in total and cost $5 - public transport, you can do it see! First was Salinas to Watsonville, which is the limit of the Salinas-Monterey system, then onto a Santa Cruz system bus. Out from Salinas it was all level flat growing fields - the US salad bowl they tell me - thru Castroville, which accdg to the banners is the "artichoke capital of the world" - must have been ... read more

rather late - but better late than not at all Sunday 31 May this is definitely a catchup - all those missing days in San Luis Obispo! - where did the time go?? too hard to write stuff when you are staying with someone and being social - and its hard enough when yo is on the road and wondering where the next stop is gonna be! Being written on the new laptop on the Capitol Corridor Amtrak train which runs from San Jose to Sacramento - the State capital if y'all forgot. Boz Scags - Dig (recentish - not Silk Degrees - do not think I could still listen to that due to 70's over-exposure) - is a suitably low-key soundtrak on the Ipod. now to San Luis Obispo - where did that come in? ... read more

SUNDAY 23 May this was Tijuana day. So walked down the end of 6th Ave to where the tram had ended last night. The tram went to a junction with the blue line down to San Ysidro/Tijuana but I coudl see where and wandered around the resticted area until someone took me in hand and pointed me in the right direction. Then its abt 10 stop or so and 4omins down to the border at San Ysidro. There - as the DoH had run out of combo vaccine at work and later scheduled after I had left, decided to avail myself of the San Diego free H1N1 vaccination in a tent - as you do on a Sunday at the Mexican border! Going across the border involves a lot of along ramps and over the highway. ... read more